I’ve done a bit more work on the map – sized it the way I want, added locations. One step closer to publication!
0824. A stone tower made of golden bricks leans over dangerously from the side of a low mountain covered in a tangle of brambles. The tower is the lair of a wang liang and his foot soldiers, 40 oni-yama. The wang liang owns an enviable library of bamboo scrolls on every imaginable subject, though every single one of them is filled with nothing but lies and half-truths. One of the scrolls contains a number of spells that appear to be one thing but are in fact another: Charm person (actually light), invisibility (actually levitate) and alter time (actually lightning bolt).
Another one from Mu-Pan. You’ll notice I haven’t done the treasure yet. I use an excel document to randomize treasure. The tables are based on those from Swords and Wizardry, and yesterday I was too lazy to open it up and generate the goods, mostly because Open Office doesn’t handle it as well as excel does and I usually work on my laptop. I know – who cares. Anyhow …
0718. A cliffside monastery in this hex was abandoned about 30 years ago when the monks were masacred in an attack by oni-aka goblins. Twenty of the goblins still dwell in the place, though they avoid the shrine. The goblins are led by Iki-Urha, an ogre with rust-colored, heavily creased skin and a bulbous nose.
The monastery shrine was dedicated to the concept of Law. The rear wall of the shrine, which measures 15 feet by 15 feet, is covered with bronze clockworks that approximate the movements of the cosmos – at least those of Nod and the planets Luna, Mercurii, Veneris, Martis and the Solar Sphere. The shrine is protected by four giant, clockwork owls perched on bronze bars that run the length of the shrine.
The goblins and ogre have desecrated the remainder of the monastery. The ogre has a single prisoner, a musician named Zeaho. Zeaho is the last survivor of a party of adventurers that sought out the monastery under the direction of their lawful sohei. Zeaho is a hengeyokai that can assume the form of a hare.
The ogres and oni-aka have a treasure of XXX in a large, locked chest.
| Oni-Aka (20): HD 1; AC 6 [13]; Atk 1 weapon (1d6); Move 9; Save 17; CL/XP 1/15; Special: Resistance to fire (50%).
| Clockwork Owls (4): HD 4+1 (19, 15, 14, 9 hp); AC 2 [17]; Atk 2 talons (1d6), bite (1d6+1); Move 6 (F30); Save 13; CL/XP 5/240; Special: Immune to sleep and charm, resistance to cold and fire (50%).
| Zeaho, Hengeyokai Bujin Lvl 4: HP 14 [22]; AC 9 [10]; Save 13 (12 vs death & poison); CL/XP 4/120; Special: Follow through. Pipe (a lute).
| Iki-Urha, Ogre: HD 4+1 (17 hp); AC 5 [14]; Atk 1 tetsubo (1d6+3); Move 9; Save 13; CL/XP 4/120. Tetsubo, nine-ring broadsword (belonged to Zeaho).
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Image of bakeneko and tanuki by GENZOMAN at DeviantArt. Much to see in his gallery.
Well, no. But you can go to Grantbridge Street & other misadventures to see what is going on.
And that reminds me – I really need to Mystery Men! Devil Dinosaur.
Just finished my first draft of Shore City, the sample setting I’m writing for Mystery Men!
I still have some labels to apply (the river, for example, is the Salamander), and then I need to add some of the highlights. Essentially, I’m going to write up a description of the city sections (Downtown, Old Town, etc) with random crime tables for each for patrols. Then, I’ll add specific buildings and sites of interest, many of which will have adventure hooks of their own.
Of course, the street names are (almost) all comic book references, and a No-Prize will be awarded to anyone who can tell me which great American city the map is based on and why.
One more before I post the update to Megacrawl 3000 …
0443. Three one-eyed boys (hitotsumi-kozo) dwell in this hex in a cave studded with sapphires (worth 100 gp each, a total of 23 are present). The cave is set in the side of a long hill, the base of which is cluttered with goji berry bushes. The one-eyed boys gather the goji berries and mash them into juice that they ferment in clay pots buried in the floor of their cave.
Although removal of the sapphires is very tempting, it is a dangerous thing to do. If a sapphire is plucked from the wall of the cave, a blue ray erupts from the wall and strikes the person holding the sapphire (no roll needed). The ray always strikes the person in the forehead and sets up a communication between the thief and something from beyond the void (per the contact other plane spell). The experience leaves most people a bit jumbled (1d8 points of ability damage spread between intelligene, wisdom and charisma as the player prefers). This damage can be healed with magic (restoration), but will not heal naturally.
If all of the sapphires are stolen from the cave, the rays create a portal through which 1d6+4 star warriors emerge. The star warriors are hairless humanoids with translucent, sapphire skin and eyes and wearing long, metallic coats of miniature scales (the material is aluminum – light weight and quite strong) and carrying two war hammers each. The star warriors track down the sapphire thieves and return them (the sapphires) to the cave. The thieves are either killed or they are taken back to the cave and taken through the portal.
| Hitotsumi-Kozo: HD 3; AC 6 [13]; Atk 1 weapon (1d4); Move 9; Save 14; CL/XP 7/600; Special: Bad luck, frightful appearance, ray of enfeeblement, silence, true seeing.
| Star Warrior: HD 5; AC 1 [18]; Atk 2 hammers (1d6); Move 12; Save 12; CL/XP 5/240; Special: Track sapphires unerringly, immunity to cold, ESP at will.
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Also – to avoid confusion when talking about the Cloud Dragon, Gold Dragon etc kingdoms and the monsters of the same names, I’ve given the kingdoms alternate names:
Jin – Gold Dragon Kingdom
Meng – Mist Dragon Kingdom
Ying – Shadow Dragon Kingdom
Yun – Cloud Dragon Kingdom
Of the kingdoms, Meng no longer exists (at least, not in a normal way), its citizens now serving as the empire’s merchant class based in the coastal cities.
0421. An army of 270 oni-aka (red goblins) raiders has encamped in this hex. The army is preparing to sack the city-state of Pantung [0322]. The raiders are working on behalf of a cabal of villains (an ogre magi, sorcerer ox and evil naga, themselves the puppets of an oni. The raiders are under the command of the hobgoblin marshal Valtrahar. Valtrahar rides atop a palanquin carried by four ogres. He wears a black bronze jingasa with a porcelain mask that bears starched whiskers. He is accompanied by a hired shugenja called Imyneda, a melancholy woman with fulvous skin, gray-green eyes and dark brown hair in braids. Imyneda has a large woman with a round, bland face who complains incessantly as she rides along on her yak. The army has three trebuchet pulled by teams of yaks.
| Valtrahar: HD 6 (34 hp); AC -1 [20]; Atk 1 weapon (1d6+1); Move 9; Save 11; CL/XP 6/400. O-yoroi, no-dachi, tanto.
| Imyneda, Shugenja Lvl 5: HP 13 [20]; AC 9 [10]; Save 11 (9 vs magic); CL/XP 4/120; Special: Spells (3rd). Bo staff, tanto, spellbook.
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Picture found HERE.
The fun of randomizing hex contents is, of course, that I don’t know what’s going to pop up and I have to try to make it fit (or delete it and pretend it didn’t come up). In this case – surprise, there’s a city in the high mountains!
0322. Pantung is an outpost city-state of 12,375 souls constructed between three dormant volcanoes. The clever engineers of Pantung have dug into the volcanoes, constructing large vents from which pour air and water warmed within the volcanoes. This has made the valley of Pantung warm all year around, despite being located at such a high elevation. The borders of the kingdom are protected by walls of ice that slowly melt and are re-built through the year.
The city-state itself is constructed on a radial pattern. The buildings are made of thick, cream-colored stone, much of it excavated from the aforementioned vents. Doors in the city-state are barred at night, for the citizenry fear the hobgoblins and yeti of the mountains. The city’s wall is 30 feet tall and has four large tower keeps protecting it. Each 1,000 foot section of the wall (there are 16 such sections) and the battlements of each tower are patrolled by 1d6+6 handgunners accompanied by a sergeant-at-arms and possibly (10% chance) a low level shugenja. Each tower has a number of war engines that launch flights of iron war rockets. Three paved roads lead from the city state, one into Tsanjan, the other two into Mu-Pan. These roads are lined by asters ranging in color from white to golden yellow to bright purple.
The primary business of Pantung is copper mining (the city-state has small mines up to 3 hexes away) and banditry. During the winter months, dozens of bandit gangs retreat into the mountains to stay in Pantung, bringing rich tributes of coins and slaves to the nu-gong. The bandit chiefs are treated as visiting royalty. The bandits never prey on the citizenry, who appreciate their bawdy tales and ample coin. The fields around Pantung support cherry and plum orchards and grazing for a breed of rugged mountain pony. The primary coin of Pantung is made of bronze (i.e. copper piece), and the average earnings of a commoner is about 2 cp per day.
Pantung is ruled by Nu-Gong Oonichay, a respected shugenja with ties to the black magicians of Tsanjan. She is assisted by a cabal of 4 noble houses, each headed by a master alchemist. Oonichay is a calculating and domineering. She has pale skin, hazel eyes and dark, brown hair that is bobbed short. Oonichay is an accomplished dancer (she was brought into Pantung as a dancing girl for the former gong). She has a small-featured, delicate face that never betrays her thoughts. She wears a cloak of gray and black vulture feathers (from the bearded vulture of the Tsanjan Plateau). Her palace is in the city-state’s center, surrounded by the legendary fruit market. The palace dungeon is a thing of legend.
The city-state’s alchemists are respected (and, to some extent, despised) throughout Mu-Pan. They put most of their efforts into discovering the elixir of life, but also produce copious amounts of black powder (mostly to fuel the iron war rockets and handguns that protect the city from invasion)
Pantung’s patron deity is Roon, the god of going. Roon’s grand temple is overseen by 10 female nsiain (Mu-Panese druids) and 300 lay brothers and sisters, most of them piao-ke (guides, former bandits). The worship of other deities is frowned upon in Pantung, and proselytizing is illegal. The nsiain of Pantung take vows of poverty (though their temple is quite wealthy) and celibacy. The temple’s wealth is used to maintain the roads (and the flowers, the aster is sacred to Roon). Priestesses wear robes of green sackcloth marked by dozens of white hand prints and carry tetsubos. They bleach their palms white. Holy days are observed by the people and priests with pilgrimages to visit shrines (actually noble crypts) in the mountains. The highest virtues preached by Roon’s church are kindness and charity, the most terrible sins blasphemy and envy.
Pantung has a shady tavern located just inside the east gate. The Golden Staff is run by Isekonall, a friendly, optimistic man who hails from the northern steppe and speaks with a thick accent. Most of the crowd in the Golden Staff is shady – bandits and slavers, for the most part. The place is usually crowded and noisy. The plum wine and short beer that Isekonall serves are a bit overpriced for their quality, but the four rooms (actually a loft partitioned with paper screens) are cheap (and mostly occupied, 1 in 6 chance of a room being vacant).
Some of the more interesting folk of Pantung include Newarada, the strinkingly beautiful high priestess of Roon that is really a disguised man (a ninja of the Black Dragon Kingdom who has played the role for over a decade, he is involved in many assassinations), Snomonchond, a flamboyant master alchemist and open heretic (he worships Sol Invictus, whom the Motherlanders call Apollo Helios), Hagravet, the well-connected captain of the guard who keeps company with Snomonchond, Zajinnes, an arrogant master alchemist and rival of Snomonchond who has a family closet full of skeletons and an unhealthy fixation on Hagravet, and Aschansary, a young official implicated in a bribery scandal – she’s had bad luck with former allies and finds it difficult to place her trust in others.
Ruler: Oonichay, Nu-Gong (Duchess), Shugenja Lvl 8
High Priestess: Newarada, Druid Lvl 8
Population: 12,375
Domain: 10 hexes
Size: 1 mile diameter
Arms: Three black dots on a field of white
Felipe Massafera brings a heightened reality to comic book characters, and I think he handles it well. I think the trick to know when to stop – to not wring too much fantasy out of the characters. Enjoy …
Sorry I’ve been away the last couple days. Still working on Tome of Horrors, Mu-Pan and Mystery Men! In the mean time, I have this odd little thought experiment (that took waaaay to much time to produce) …
So I’m working in the yard the other day, and an idea pops into my head – essentially doing something like the League of Extraordinary Gentleman using only ’70s television as my guide (with a few nods to older and later television). What would a super hero/sci-fi/fantasy world built with ’70s television look like? Well, I think it might look a little something like this …
Note: I’m building most of these heroes with 30,000 XP (except some of the big boys and girls, who get 60,000 XP) to keep them even and maintain the reduced power level usually found on the small screen.
Early 1970’s
Prior to the coming of the disco decade a few heroes had already made their mark on the world. During the WWII, Wonder Woman arrived from Paradise Island to aid the allies against the Nazi threat, but by the end of the war she left Col. Trevor to return home. Whether she ever worked with government agent Steve Rogers is unknown. Since the 1950’s, the incredible Superman had been protecting not only Metropolis, CT but the entire world. The dynamic duo of Batman and Robin had been active in Gotham City, NJ for a decade. The main focus of the nation during this period was, of course, the Cold War with the Soviets, and a whole host of heroes had answered their country’s call, from legendary agents 86 and 99 of Control to the men from UNCLE to the U.K.’s Avengers initiative, which unfortunately closed down by the end of the 1960’s (though whether Steed, Peel and the others ended up in the Village is, of course, a state secret).
As the 1970’s dawns, Dr. Michael Rhodes travels the country with assistant Nancy Murphy solving supernatural crimes and mysteries. Whether the due ever investigated rumors of a genie in Cocoa Beach, FL, witches in Westport, CT, hauntings in Schooner Bay, ME or a flying nun in Puerto Rico is unknown. Magician Anthony Blake, on the other hand, uses prestidigitation and his skill as an escape artist to solve crime.
In 1970 the world still mourns the loss of the fist sub-orbital passenger carrier Spindrift to a cosmic storm. The fate of the crew remains unknown.
A number of organizations, private and public, are in operation in the early 1970’s to protect the world from evil, including Division Seven’s Impossible Mission Force, Hawaii’s Five-O squad on the public side and the World Security Corp of San Francisco and high-tech detective agency Intertect in Los Angeles. World Security Corp’s key agents include Probe One (Hugh Lockwood), Omega Probe (Nick Bianco) and Backup Probe (C.R. Grover), while Intertect soon loses their top operative, soldier-of-fortune Joe Mannix. Agents 86 and 99 are still active with Control in Washington D.C. and still thwarting the plans of Chaos, now with the help of android Hymie. Glenn Garth Gregory of the Delphi Bureau uses his photographic memory to conduct counter-espionage operations.
Meanwhile, a loner known to government agents as “The Immortal” makes his way across the country, pursued by Fletcher.
Mid 1970’s
By the middle of the decade Dr. Michael Rhodes gets some competition in the arena of supernatural investigations, in the form of reporter Carl Kolchak of the Independent News Service’s Chicago Bureau. One wonders if a conversation with fellow journalist Richard Cunningham ever sent Kolchak north to Milwaukee, WI to investigate reports of middle-aged auto shop teacher Arthur Fonzarelli and his amazing control over electronics and women. If he did, he might be told the strange tale of a visit from a man from another world (but more on him later).
Even more incredible is the rise of several new super powered heroes. Astronaut Col. Steve Austin (a colleague of Maj. Anthony Nelson and Capt. William “Buck” Rogers) is revived after a terrible accident and turned into a cyborg operative of the Office of Scientific Intelligence (total cost estimated at $6,000,000). A year later a similar operation is performed on tennis pro Jaimie Sommers of Ojai, CA, making her the world’s first bionic woman.
Two invisible heroes are created during the middle part of the decade, including scientist Daniel Westin who is turned invisible while sabotaging his own equipment at the Klae Corporation and secret agent Sam Casey, code named “The Gemini Man”, of Intersect.
In New York City, a young college student named Peter Parker develops the abilities of a spider after being bitten by a radioactive arachnid. Meanwhile, in California, teenaged Billy Batson begins traveling the state with his mentor in an R.V. and helping folks out of problems as Captain Marvel. He is sometimes assisted by high school teacher-turned superhero Andrea Thomas, who possesses the power of the goddess Isis.
In the U.K., the Ministry revives the Avengers program with two new agents, Purdy and Gambit, under the tutelage of veteran John Steed. Apparently, Steed and former colleague Emma Peel were not sent to the Village.
In Los Angeles, there are persistent rumors of a band of ex-special forces operating in the L.A. underground as soldiers-of-fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them …
Late 1970’s
After 35 years away, Diana Prince, Wonder Woman, returns to America to join the Inter-Agency Defense Command with Steve Trevor, Jr. A few years earlier the United States had attempted to create its own Wonder Woman, but the program was ultimately not continued. Meanwhile, former marine Steve Rogers, Jr. – the son of 1940’s government agent Steve Rogers – is given an injection of FLAG (Full Latent Ability Gain, not to be confused with the Foundation for Law and Government) after a terrible accident and becomes the costumed hero Captain America. Cap roams the country in a heavily modified van fighting crime.
Joining the Immortal as a wandering fugitive is Dr. David Bruce Banner, physician and scientist, who becomes a creature nick-named “The Hulk” after suffering a powerful dose of gamma radiation in an experiment meant to unlock the hidden strength inside human beings. Perhaps his travels take him through the County of Hazzard, GA, where a couple of good old boys has recently been put on probation for running moonshine.
Some non-humans are among the heroes that emerge in the late 1970’s. In California, a possible survivor of the destruction of Atlantis is found with amnesia and goes to work for the Foundation for Oceanic Research, a government agency. Perhaps his travels take him to Bay City, CA, home of detectives Starsky and Hutch. In Boulder, CO, the aforementioned man from space, one Mork from Ork, touches down on Earth on a mission to understand human beings.
Sorcery still abounds in the late 1970’s. Perhaps its most powerful practitioner is a mysterious man called Mr. Roarke, who dwells on a fantastic island in the Caribbean making people’s wishes come true. He is assisted, they say, by a strange homunculus called Tattoo. Just as disturbing is the presence of the infamous Count Dracula, posing as a professor at a college in San Francisco.
Scientific wonders of the late 1970’s include the deep space probe ships Ranger I and Ranger II (Capt. “Buck” Rogers is training during this period for his mission on Ranger III, the last of NASA’s deep space probes) to the incredible nuclear Supertrain, which is the size of a cruise ship and travels between New York and Los Angeles.
Beyond
As the decade closes, mankind faces the destruction of their planet in 1987 by nuclear war – a nuclear war that does not catch Buck Rogers, who is frozen in space at the time. The ultimate cause of that destruction might be the robotic servants of the alien cylons, who followed mankind’s last battlestar, Galactica, to Earth. Perhaps that nuclear holocaust can be avoided by the assemblage of a league of heroes under the tutelage of a mastermind like Mr. Roarke or the mysterious time traveler known only as “the Doctor”.
Land of Nod 